Secret Isaac (10 page)

“Strange,” Isaac said. “I saw the king in Dublin. He didn't open his mouth once. Arthur, what's he doing at the Shelbourne Hotel?”

“Living with his ancestors. The king's got Irish blood.”

“What happened between Annie and him?”

“They had a love spat,” Arthur said. He couldn't stop smiling at Isaac. The First Dep was forlorn. He'd lost his strength somewhere, dropped it in the street the day he'd met Annie Powell. He'd never shake loose of that girl. He went to kill a man for Annie. He would have done the same to Arthur Greer.

“That mark on her came from a knife, didn't it?”

Isaac was muttering now.

“He put a perfect
D
on her. Dermott loved to croon, you said. A talking man. How did he get to be so handy with a knife?”

“Ask the king. Maybe he did some practicing at college.” The smile on Arthur had already turned brittle. “… Isaac, I'm getting busy. You'll have to go.”

A white maid had come in to dust all the pillows. A boy left with a grocery wagon. Isaac saw a plumber walking on his knees in one of the toilets. Arthur had a functioning army to serve him, but he didn't offer Isaac one small piece of cake.

Isaac had a touch of amnesia. He couldn't remember what his next appointment was. Then his intuition caught hold: he had no more appointments today. He'd grown invisible hiding in that nameless hotel, and it was hard to get his coloring back. He'd thrown himself into too many capers. Now he couldn't solve the riddle of his own existence. Had Annie become Isaac's sphinx? Who was she? Why should Annie's mark have maimed him so?

He went up to Morningside Heights and visited that old school of his, Columbia College. Isaac didn't really have an Alma Mater. Only four months under Marshall Berkowitz. The school year was about to begin. Trunks were being carried into the dormitories. It gave Isaac a scare, reminded him of his own meager education. He shouldn't have stopped reading
Ulysses
.

He didn't wait on line with the other freshmen in the corridors of Hamilton Hall. Isaac crashed into Marshall's office. The dean of freshmen was annoyed with him.

“Isaac, I have a mob of kids outside. Couldn't you telephone?”

“No,” Isaac said.

Marshall's desk was littered with folders pierced in every corner with a silver pin. The pins must have represented a kind of system to Marsh. He seemed much skinnier in New York. What had happened to that Dublin rump of his? His ass was gone. Was he still crying over Bloom's dismantled house? Isaac was a pragmatist. He couldn't mourn Number 7 Eccles Street. He had the living to contend with. Specific scars and the king.

“I want that recommendation I wrote for little Dermott.”

Marshall trembled over the silver pins. “You see the condition of this place. I couldn't find it in a thousand years.”

“Marsh, I'll help you look.”

They stood over Marshall's filing cabinets and searched the drawers. Sheets of paper crumbled in Isaac's hand. Folders ripped at the edge. Students were knocking on the door. Marshall wouldn't open up. It took an hour to dig out Isaac's ancient memorandum. It was typed on Police stationery. Isaac had to glimpse at his own language before he could believe a word.

… Marshall, I know you're going to think this one is a sweetfaced hood. He wears saddlestiched pants. He has sideburns and a duck's ass. He's “Bronx” up to his eyebrows. I could identify the streets he walked on, the rocks he must have thrown into windows. But he has a head on him. The boy can think. It's saved him from those deathtraps of Southern Boulevard and Boston Road. Forget the shitty grades. High school must have been a bore from beginning to end. I don't know if
Silas Marner
put him to sleep. But talk to him about
Hamlet
. Dermott can tell you about hysteria, idiocy, and revenge. Don't let the kid get away. It would be a shame for Columbia to lose him.

“Isaac, I can Xerox that for you,” Marshall said. The search through his files had gentled him.

“Thanks, Marsh, but that's okay. I won't forget it now …”

Marshall returned to his desk. He was staring at the walls, surrounded by folders and pins. Isaac came out of his reverie to notice Marsh's fish eyes, that dead, abstracted look.

“What's wrong?”

“Sylvia's left me …”

Isaac didn't have to hear why Sylvia Berkowitz fled from
Ulysses
and
Finnegans Wake
. How long can you coexist with James Joyce under the blanket with you? But he couldn't utterly abandon Marsh. “How did it happen?”

“I don't know. She didn't take a thing with her … no panties. Not even her books.”

It wasn't a hopeless case. Isaac had the resources to track a dean's missing wife. He could descend on 1 Police Plaza, the official home of the First Dep, and organize a search party. Isaac was famous for his ability to climb into the roots of any borough and come up with a handful of runaways.

“Marsh, I'll see what I can do.”

The freshmen outside Marshall's office looked surly. Isaac couldn't blame them. They probably had to skip lunch on account of him. Isaac also remembered waiting for Marsh. The freshman with the bull neck. Isaac Sidel. He should have been champion of the wrestling team. Isaac was a devil at a hundred and forty-eight pounds. He'd gone out for wrestling because it was the one sport at college that suited his temperament. Football was for the grubs. You needed stamina, psychology, and strong, slippery arms to wrestle. And Isaac's neck. No one could pin Isaac when his neck was bridged on the mat. He would suck oranges before a match, stare at his opponent, and do warm-ups in his beautiful Columbia leggings. He traveled to Yale with the freshman team. The Yalie he wrestled was disqualified for gouging. It was the first and last Columbia win. He stopped going to practice. He didn't have the time. James Joyce had already bitten Isaac in the ass.

He couldn't get out from under Marshall's influence. He idolized the dean. Wrestling was nothing compared to the music of words. The team dropped Isaac Sidel. He had to give those beautiful leggings back to the college. Language was all. He was jealous of other boys who occupied Marsh. He would catch the dean going in and out of his office. There was always some question to ask. “Why does Joyce say that an Irishman's house is his coffin?”

Had little Dermott behaved like that? Did he follow Marsh around, beg audiences with the dean? Goggle at him over cups of coffee? The romance was shortlived for both of them. Dermott went off to Yale, and Isaac disappeared from college. Were they still votaries of Marsh? Was Dermott writing songs about the Liffey from his hotel room? Is that all his exile meant? A crook returning to scholarship in his middle years? Isaac was the fool of fools. It was business, business, business that was holding the king. And Isaac was a man without a clue. He should have stayed an ordinary Police inspector. He didn't have much resiliency as the First Dep. When a cop falls, he isn't supposed to lie flat.

Marshall must have followed him across South Campus. He ran after Isaac with his tie trailing down the back of his neck. They were like two gaunt, hurt creatures chasing one another. “Isaac,” the dean said. “Sylvia told me about you and her … she has a habit of confessing her love affairs. But she didn't have to tell. It makes sense. You were her Dublin beau.”

“I'm sorry, Marsh … it happened. We were going downhill from Eccles Street. We landed in a deserted lane and …”

“Stop that. She would have gone after Dermott if you hadn't arrived … Isaac, please find her for me.”

17

I
SAAC
thought and thought of Sylvia, and came to Jennifer Pears. He had his men shop for two women at a time. He wouldn't go near that ugly red fortress at 1 Police Plaza. He took a ride to Centre Street and sat in his old rooms. He shouldn't have fucked his mentor's wife. Now he owed Marsh. His deputies were going gray in the head. Who were these two cunts that belonged to Isaac? Sylvia Berkowitz was on the loose. They didn't mind scrambling for her. But why did they have to shadow this Jennifer lady? Isaac demanded all her moves. The First Dep was reluctant to get Mrs. Pears on the phone. She might hang up on a prick like him. Isaac was a terrible suitor. He would snake in and out of a woman's life. No one could stand him for very long. He was an uncivilized boy, fifty-one years old.

His deputies had no “buys” on Sylvia Berkowitz. She must have shrunk into the ground, like that big Irish ape, O'Toole. Not the green-eyed one. Jennifer Pears was a piece of cake. Soon as she said goodbye to her doormen, Isaac's deputies had her under control. These weren't dummy cops. They knew how to fatten a page for Isaac.
Takes her boy to the Little Red Schoolhouse
. (They posed as fire chiefs to follow Jennifer inside.)
Plays with him up on the roof with his kindergarten class. She usually stays an hour. Then she goes to Fourth Avenue. The lady likes to buy old books …

Isaac was religious about reading the reports. It gave him a feeling of power over Jenny. He had her moments at his command. He could intrude upon them whenever he liked. Bookstalls weren't for him. He went to the Little Red Schoolhouse on Christopher Street. He didn't have a fire chief's hat. He had to bluff his way past the bulldog lady who stared at him from a cubicle inside the door. Was she the school's concierge? Isaac had so many bumps in his forehead. He might have been a freak about to paw an innocent child. The concierge would have summoned the janitors to get rid of Isaac. But then he smiled, and the bumps went away.

“I'm Moses,” he said. “Moses Herzog Pears. My grandnephew is in your kindergarten. Alexander Pears. I'm supposed to meet his mother on the roof. That's Jennifer, my niece …”

Isaac climbed up to the roof. It was a playpen fenced around with wire. It had enough materiel to confuse an army: wagons, sandboxes, tunnels, houses and bridges made of cardboard walls and cinder blocks. He couldn't locate Alex in the muddle of kids. Jennifer stood near the fence. Her green eyes could have sucked in every wagon, tunnel, and bridge. The creep was in love with her. He had crazy knots in his legs. The worm didn't give him any flak. It curled up in Isaac's belly, satisfied with itself.

Jennifer wasn't coy with him. She wouldn't crouch behind a tunnel because the schmuck had disappointed her, gone to Dublin to kill a man without any notice.

“You don't look happy,” she said.

He wished her eyes had a more neutral color. Then he could have walked away from that roof without Jennifer Pears. He grunted the word
cappuccino
. Jenny understood. She couldn't leave at Isaac's first grunt. She had responsibilities to the kindergarten. But she met him downstairs in the Cafe Borgia.

Isaac's vocabulary was coming back. “Dublin … had to go … how's your husband Mel?”

“Isaac, what the fuck do you want from me?”

Sitting next to her terrified him. He licked the coffee with his head between his shoulders, like a snail.

“More sessions at your hotel, is that what you're after?… or are you on a culture kick? Isaac, should we take in the Cézanne show at the Modern?… do you want to feel me up inside a movie house? What's your pleasure today?”

Couldn't he borrow Dermott's magic tongue? The king would have known how to woo Jennifer Pears.

“I'm pregnant.”

The worm beat against the lining of Isaac's gut with its many hooks. His face landed in the cappuccino mug. He came up with milk on his nose, a ridiculous man.

“You're a godsend, Isaac. We've been trying to have another baby for years. A brother or sister for Alex. You know, all that shit about an only child. Nothing happened until you came along … would you like a share of the baby? We could form a limited partnership. Put your request in. Would you prefer a girl or a boy? I'm banking on a girl. Should we allow her to pick her own dad?… Isaac, do me a favor. Don't visit me at my son's school. It isn't nice.”

And she was gone from the Cafe Borgia before Isaac could wipe his nose with a paper napkin. Funny thing, he didn't feel like a patriarch. He had an itch in his testicles. His knees were dead. A worm tore his gut like shavings on a pipe. Was he going to be a daddy every twenty-nine years? He had a daughter who was crazy for men. Marilyn the Wild. She could twist Isaac harder than any worm the Guzmanns had stuck him with. What would Marilyn think of a new half-sister or brother?

Isaac ran out of the cafe. He could have had his men steal Jennifer from the bookstalls of Fourth Avenue, carry her to his hotel, wrapped in a body bag or an old blanket from the horse patrol. He wouldn't have undressed her, no, no, no. I'll take that partnership, he'd say. Half your belly is mine. Whatever lunacy he was into, he still had the eyes of a cop. A man was following him from the next corner. A man with scruffy white hair. Isaac had to laugh. It was a retired captain from precincts in the Bronx. Morton Schapiro. Who would put such a joker on the First Deputy's tail? Isaac led Morton down to Wooster Street and trapped him against the window of a deserted shoe factory. Morton had a Detective Special in his pants. Isaac stole the gun away and tossed it through a crack in the window.

“Morton, who's been hiring you to play Billy the Kid?”

“Nobody.”

“Come on. Did Dermott holler in your ear all the way from Dublin?”

“Who's Dermott?” Morton said.

Isaac could have taken him into the factory and pulled on Morton's skull until the old captain lost his beautiful white hair. He'd scalped people before. But he didn't want blood on his fingernails. He was going to be a father again. He grabbed Morton by the collar and jerked his neck. The captain swayed like a large rotting pumpkin. It couldn't have been very serious if Isaac's enemies were hoping to glue Schapiro to him. The captain was no threat. He couldn't hold down a precinct while he was on the Force. The Chief Inspector would ship him from house to house. Schapiro was a “flying” captain, who would take over a precinct for a month and then push on. His lieutenants laughed in his face. The homicide squad wouldn't say hello to him in the hall. There were no parties for Captain Mort when the PC asked him to retire. Whatever job he had now was nothing but charity. Isaac could have choked him to death. But it would have been a bother to round up guests for Morton's Jewish wake.